


Guilty

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: HaiKise Week, M/M, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 01:32:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4502658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>they’re no saints, but even sins aren’t all bad</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guilty

**Author's Note:**

> rehashes some of the canon so if that's not your thing i'm sorry

i. sloth

Shougo has no real reason not to be complacent. He skips practice every now and then, but every time Nijimura drags him back because he’s wanted and missed. His spot on the starting squad is threatened by no one, and how can it be when he’s as much of a miracle as the rest of them? He’s got strange hair and special abilities, even if they aren’t so nice. He’s not so nice and shiny like a new ten-yen coin the way the rest of them are (or pretend to be). And that’s okay; a little bit of variety never hurt anyone. When the methods get too predictably nice, it’s boring—at least it’s that way in the video games he plays on the personal days off he takes.

Ryouta is bored. That’s an understatement, a simplification of the problem—an elementary-schooler is bored when they finish the book they’re reading and it’s half an hour until dinner. It’s not that kind of passing boredom, a blip on the radar—it’s like he’s got a radar full of blips, a constant drone of boredom, the absence of which would be a shock, and surely a brief (but welcome) blip. Even when Ryouta’s occupied with some sort of activity, he’s really not—his eyes glaze over; he tunes out the sounds; it all winds on and on as if he’s spiraling down toward some end but at the same time going nowhere, with no inclination to change course, simply coasting along.

And then the basketball hits him on the head.

ii. greed

Ryouta’s wanted things before—toys, attention, for his sisters to leave him alone, that first modeling job—but never like this. As soon as he saw something he could have it, and when gratification is instant gratification disappears. And people are so easy, skills are so easy and meaningless, that he’s forgotten what a challenge is, the type of thing that he could get away with not being able to do correctly but didn’t want to—the type of thing he couldn’t master but couldn’t give up on either. And Ryouta wants a starting spot on this basketball team.

He’s not quite good enough yet, and even though he’s improving faster than he supposedly should be able it’s still much slower than his usual pace, slow enough to make him work at it. And that Haizaki Shougo, that foulmouthed kid who no one really seems to like (and he doesn’t seem to like anyone else) is lazy, is far too complacent—even if he beats Ryouta (when he bothers to show up) he won’t be much better for much longer. And how can he not want this? How can he not spend every day perfecting his skills? How can he let go of the ball at his fingertips and not pick it up but turn around and go home early? Ryouta doesn’t understand it.

Shougo doesn’t understand Kise Ryouta, either. Who the fuck does he think he is, coming in here and undermining Shougo? He’s talking with Shougo’s teammates and trying to insert himself in, trying to copy Shougo and replace him in a shiner and friendlier package and fuck that (and he can go fuck himself). Shougo knows what Kise Ryouta wants, and that’s everything because for people like him nothing is ever enough. They beg and whine for more and it gets handed to them on a fucking silver platter and then they whine and ask for gold and they fucking get it. And when that doesn’t happen, he can’t be happy with the friends and jobs and money and possessions that he already has; he has to take over the few scraps Shougo’s clinging to for himself. But once he’s done with that (and if Shougo has his way, that guy will just give up sooner or later) he’ll turn on someone else—that’s the way it usually is with people like that, isn’t it? Shougo wouldn’t know; he only knows wanting and not having.

iii. envy

More accurately, Shougo had known having, to an extent. Maybe he just thought he did; maybe he’d never belonged anywhere at all. Maybe he’d just been a temporary place holder for Ryouta, who certainly acts like some sort of ascendant king with those other fucking not-friends of Shougo’s. It’s as if he was never there; they never greet him in the hallways (they never had, though); they don’t talk to him at lunch and they don’t seem to be missing him in the hallways. Even Nijimura turns his head, ignores him—Haizaki hasn’t said a word to him, but it’s clear he doesn’t want to talk. And why should he? Why should he when he can talk to that fucking perfect little princess Ryouta?

Shougo does not want to be Ryouta but he wants the things Ryouta has; he wants to start on the basketball team and he wants a group of friends and he wants all the things Ryouta already had fucking two million of before he took Shougo’s, and he wants to be as comfortable with all of it as Ryouta seems to be; he wants to make it seem so fucking natural that no one could think of ever taking it away from him again. It’s not fair—life isn’t fair; Shougo knows that already, backward and forward. But for it to tip even more in the opposite direction makes him feel like giving life the finger—well, after he takes back what’s rightfully his and then some from Ryouta.

iv. pride

It’s true Ryouta’s never beaten Shougo. No matter what people say about how Shougo left the team, Ryouta never beat him, never really took his spot. Shougo left because he wanted to, even if it wasn’t completely voluntary (and even if no one who mattered had tried to stop him)—not because he needed to. But still, Seijuurou had clearly thought Ryouta was better, and the rest of the team had been in agreement. And Shougo, for once in his life, has been given the opportunity to show what he means to do—and here he means to erase all doubt that Ryouta was or actually is any better.

It’s true Ryouta’s never beaten Shougo. Even if everyone conceded that he probably would have at some point, even if Shougo was forced off the team, even if Ryouta’s a somebody and Shougo’s a nobody, Ryouta’s never really beaten him head-to-head. And Ryouta’s learned a lot since the last time they met; he’s grown a lot and changed a lot, but maybe Shougo has, too; maybe he’s kept up the pace. But Ryouta’s got to show he’s legitimate—he needs to lead Kaijou to victory against Fukuda Sogo as the ace, not only to get them one step closer to the title but to shut Shougo down.

v. wrath

In the weeks after he defeats Shougo, even with the frustration of a fourth-place finish and the retirement of the seniors and his leg in a cast, Ryouta is calmer. It’s as if going to town on Shougo like that had finally made him let go, realize how stupid the whole thing was in the first place. It doesn’t matter who’s better now, who was better the last time; it doesn’t matter who was better in middle school. It only matters when it comes to whose team is advancing. Shougo can try to take out his ankle and steal moves from his teammates all he wants, but Kaijou made it farther. And it had felt good to unleash everything, all the pent-up rage and the skills he could not copy and the moves that he could not get a share in, all of that in just a few minutes, overpowering Shougo—and that look of fear and despair in his eyes had been worth every bit of it.

The bruise on Shougo’s cheek is fading. To anyone who looks, it’s just another bruise on the face of that boy who always gets into fights. Shougo had felt it—not reverberating through his whole being or some dumb hippie shit like that, but it cut him deep even though it drew no blood. And in that moment, he’d had no will to carry on against Ryouta; even now he doesn’t. Even now it doesn’t really matter; he’d hit Ryouta where it had hurt and Ryouta had hit right back in a different way and now Shougo’s hurting in both ways, getting the brunt of everything again. He’s not going to accept that Ryouta’s definitely better than he is, but it’s time to stop. For most of that game he’d given Ryouta what he came to give him—a beat down. He’d schooled Ryouta, and then Ryouta had done what Ryouta does, which is copy it and do it better, and Shougo should have known. But by that point he’d played all his cards, used up his anger even though it had gone right back up through the roof. But it had gone as quickly as it had come this time, this rage at the unbelievable gone within less than a night. Ryouta can have his shitty Teikou friends and his pretty, fancy skills, if he even still fucking wants them now that he can do anything.

vi. lust

There’s a glint in Ryouta’s eyes to match Shougo’s; it’s deep and ferocious and full of want—not that Shougo’s staring or anything, but he can feel it. And hey, who wouldn’t want to fuck him? He’d like to think of himself as pretty damn irresistible. And Ryouta, when he looks like a hungry leopard about to lick his chops, is kind of hard to stay off of. Yeah, he’s pretty and he’s always been, but under this light in these skintight jeans showing off way more of his firm thighs than basketball shorts do and the muscles of his arms accented in the shadows, Shougo’s losing concentration. Damn. Maybe it is kind of hard not to stare, to drag his eyes away—but what’s he doing staring at this point? Shouldn’t he be touching?

Shougo reaches out to touch him and Ryouta accepts, leans into it—it took him long enough; he resisted maybe more than Ryouta gave him credit for. His hands are rough; his eyes are rough; he’s rough all over but in a way that Ryouta wants, a way that could scratch all his itches and maybe help sate the turmoil rising in his veins. Shougo looks hungry, at a loss; his eyes are clouded over and when they kiss it’s rough and uneven and too short because Shougo can’t catch his breath, hands already moving down to cup Ryouta’s ass and that’s right where Ryouta wants them. And Ryouta’s moving his own hands, over the contours of Shougo’s torso beneath his shirt, reacting to every one of Shougo’s moans with a sound in response like they’re some kind of twinned array of circuitry.

vii. gluttony

Ryouta has always wanted more, more than he has, more than he can have—he is never satisfied, even with Shougo. Especially with Shougo. He wants more, more of Shougo’s words thrown into his face, the hissed insults like snake-language under his breath and into a searing, rough kiss in which Ryouta thinks of devouring Shougo. Even when Shougo’s cranky and annoying in the mornings, Ryouta wants all of him, wants him to take his picture and make him breakfast and come back to bed but also maybe go away.

And Ryouta’s already taken so much of Shougo already, his spot on the team and some of his pride (which he’ll never admit) and had him physically, so much and so many times, and he will never be done with Shougo. He will never be bored with Shougo, because he’ll never be able to devour Shougo; he’ll never be able to pin Shougo down because he’s constantly changing and twisting things around and adjusting them and he marches to the beat of a drum Ryouta can’t hear. And so even when he has Shougo, when Shougo’s asleep with his arms around Ryouta’s waist and drooling on his pillow, it’s not close to over.


End file.
